I'm Not A Rat

Timothyyordy.com

2009-03-10T10:47:00.001-04:00

The transition to my new domain, timothyyordy.com, has begun. All new articles will be posted over there so please update your bookmarks. Thank you for making imnotarat.com as successful as it has been and I hope to see you at my new site.

Switching To A New Web Host

2009-02-23T07:40:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the long delay between posts. Believe it or not I've been putting a lot of effort into actually doing things lately instead of just writing about doing things. My last post said that I was thinking about switching to Wordpress. Well that I think is going to happen but now it's going to be in conjunction with changing over to a new web host.

I've used AMHosting.com ever since I've been making websites, along with a couple other hosts along the way. During that time I've found them to be very easy to work with and have reasonable rates. Over the past couple years though it feels like something has changed at the company. There's been more than one instance of mywebsite going down for a day and then coming back up a day later with no explanation or apology from the company. The latest instance of this occurred yesterday. I realized that two of my websites had been down for nearly four days and yesterday all of my email accounts associated with them went down as well. Upon contacting someone from AMHosting.com via their online chat, I was told that a tech would contact me through email or phone. My websites came back, but no one ever did contact me with any kind of explanation or apology again.

My websites might not be huge magnets for internet traffic but I am paying for a service and expect a certain level of reliability. So over the next couple weeks I'll be making the transition to my new web host. I'm going to try and make it as seemless as possible though there is bound to be some hiccups. Also during that time, posting will likely continue to be sporadic.

Wordpress

2009-02-04T15:16:00.002-05:00

Just a quick update today. I'm considering switching over to Wordpress. I've used Google's Blogger to power I'm Not A Rat for the past year and I'm starting to feel the itch to move on.

There are certainly aspects that I like about Blogger. One of which is that all of my posts are saved not only on my web host but also on Google's servers. Should my web host go down, I've still got all of my content online and can easily just start feeding it through a new web host. I have nearly all of my articles saved on my computer as well but should the need arise, reposting it all through a new web host would be a pain. I've also been able to mask pretty well that this is a Blogger powered blog in that I haven't used one of their ugly templates.

Wordpress on the other hand would give me far greater levels of customization and allow me to do some things with the way articles are displayed that would help separate different subjects a little more easily.

I haven't made a final decision yet whether or not to go through the trouble of changing everything over. We'll see what happens.

A New Approach to Site Ads

2009-02-02T09:03:00.001-05:00

My goal with this website from the beginning has been to write articles about exploring ways of making money outside of working for someone else and to need less money by being more self-sufficient, and also as of late covering topics about how the current political and economic evironment may affect all of our freedoms to pursue happiness in this manner.

If along the way the website itself managed to generate some money, well then great. That being said, my Google AdSense revenue has stunk recently. So I decided to try a new approach via TextAdMarket.com. It's a site that lets you sell text ads for a whatever price you determine based on what you think you can sell and based on your traffic level. Ads are sold on a per day basis. If an ad space sells, then the price goes up. For each day that none of the ad spots sell, the price drops. It's based on supply and demand. A website supplies the ad space but if there's no demand then the price drops. A publisher can also use a fixed price if he doesn't want to use the Market price setup.

I think it's a great concept and I'm giving it a try to see how it goes. You'll notice the new ad location on the top right hand side of the site, right above the Google text ads. Another option that TextAdMarket.com gives you is to allow pay-per-click ads to show up in the ad spots until a spot is actually sold. The only hiccup I'm seeing so far is that it seems like, if the pay-per-click ads are showing then there is no real way for your website visitors to see that the ad slots are available for sale. You can create a separate link to the ad and manually add that to the site but that seems less convenient than it needs to be.

For publishers, signing up your own site is free and only takes a few minutes. For advertisers, you are buying ad space of course but in a very targeted way as opposed to a kind of blind approach applied using Google Adwords.

A Grower's Challenge

2009-01-28T10:30:00.002-05:00

It's the time of year to start planning out the garden for the coming season and it's been on my mind a lot lately. We've gone three years in a row with some fairly crummy gardening results and last season I was almost ready to give up entirely. But, a winter's worth of tasteless grocery store fruits and vegetables has brought me back for another attempt. This year I actually plan to grow more than ever before so it should prove interesting to see how well I follow through with it.

Last year we had attempted the gardening method called Lasagna Gardening. It was a spectacular failure but I think part of that was our fault. Over the winter I researched some other gardening methods and came to the conclusion that I don't need any fancy gardening method. People have been growing stuff right in the ground for thousands of years and all it took was some hard work to keep the weeds out. And keeping the weeds out is always where we have faltered. So I'm looking for some tips and suggestions that any of my readers might have from their gardening experiences that might help me grow a successful garden this year.

I've also been contemplating the question of what would I do if there really was a shortage in the food supply? Could we survive on what we grow? Right now the answer would be no, but I want to take a step in that direction. I am going to take one week this summer and not eat anything beyond what we have produced ourselves. There will be two exceptions to this idea. The first one will be fluids, though I will try and limit fluids to water, milk, and some juices. Nothing artificial at all. The other exception will be meat, though here again I will limit my intake during this week. We don't produce our own meat so I can't be too strict about that but again certainly no processed meats and I'll probably come up with some preset amount of portions of meat that I will eat for the week. If our chickens are producing eggs by this point then the eggs will obviously be fair game.

I really think it will fun and quite healthy to exclusively live off of what we grow. I haven't picked an exact date yet, when I do I'll post an update. So is anyone else willing to take the Grower's Challenge with me?

Contemplating Chickens

2009-01-19T18:45:00.000-05:00

So for the past couple years I've been considering the idea of raising chickens. I thought it would be a great way to enjoy fresh eggs and meat. I would know where it came from and it would save me money and the food would likely be far better quality than what I can buy at the grocery store. During the past couple of weeks I started considering this more seriously and sought some advice on the matter. Some of the friendly people in the forums at Backyardchickens.com have been very helpful and have cleared up a couple of misconceptions that I had.

It turns out that it's fairly unlikely that raising my own chickens will save me money and could actually cost me more than store bought. My eggs will be cage-free organic eggs but I don't spend the money on cage-free organic eggs from the store now so I can't consider the cost of those kind of eggs. Even if I build a coop as cheaply as possible, the cost of grain will make up a good amount of the cost of the eggs I get. The eggs themselves won't start coming until five or six months from the time I actually get the little chicks.

There's also the matter of butchering. I really don't have the stomach for it and if I pay someone else to do it then I'm right back to where I started to it not being worth it financially. I also learned that most people butcher between eight and nine weeks which seemed awfully young to me but I'm certainly no expert.

After learning all of this I was still on the fence about whether or not this was going to be a good thing to pursue. Then another tainted food recall appeared on the local evening news. It seems that this is happening several times a year now where we can't trust the food that is being certified as safe to eat by the FDA. When I started to think about that and combined it with the massive inflation that many economists are expecting due to the government meddling in the economic system, I knew that I really didn't have a choice anymore. I knew that even if financially it doesn't work out better right away, that in a very short amount of time it could be a great investment and if safer, more nutritious food is the result then that is even better. So this Spring, I will most likely have some chickens and you will have a front row seat to all of my chicken escapades.

A Clarification of Intent

2009-01-16T07:20:00.000-05:00

Over the past week there have been a couple of comments on this website from readers that have expressed discontent with what they see as anti-Obama rhetoric in some of my articles. In light of that, I feel that I should clarify what my intentions are in writing articles that are political in nature.

Perhaps before the election some of my political articles could be seen as anti-Obama but anything since then has simply been an examination of his proposed policies. Specifically the ones that could affect us all financially. Really, that has been the focus. Nearly every political article I've done has been about finances. One reader's comment was that I was getting off topic. I'd have to disagree with that. Now more than ever we all need to be knowledgeable about how the policies that are being enacted in government will affect us financially and how they will help us or hinder us in our pursuit of financial independence. From that stand point it is completely relevant and on topic.

Before an election people can stand up for or against a candidate but afterwords all you can do is stand up for or against their policies. Where the idea of my articles being anti-Obama really falls short is that never once when discussing him since the election have I strayed from how his policies will affect us financially. He is our President, whether some people like it or not is beside the point. What does matter is how we are able to live our lives under any government and right now he is the leader of the government in the United States, so yes his name will come up often I'm sure.

I heard a story today of a family that had some chickens on a four acre piece of land that they own around their house. The chickens provided some extra food and helped save them money. A neighbor complained about the chickens, and the local government made the family get rid of all of them. I still believe strongly in getting out of the rat race, choosing self-employment, and being self-sufficient. But when we've come to a place as a nation where the government has the power to stop you from even taking small steps, like raising chickens, to help towards achieving those things then yes, we need to discuss it. We need to be informed about what is happening and in some cases we need to stand against it. Freedom to pursue each of our own liberations from the rat race should never be infringed upon by the government.

And For My Next Trick, I'll Create Jobs

2009-01-14T07:44:00.000-05:00

The economy continues to slow and the unemployment rate continues to rise. I've already been laid off of one job in the past year and don't look forward to it happening again. The company I currently work for is a bit more financially sound than the previous one though, so I'm not too worried about it for the moment.

For those of you who have lost your job or are about to, have no fear because Obama is here and he is going to create 3,000,000 new jobs. I feel like every time I hear him speak he says he's going to create three million jobs. How exactly does that work? How do you just create millions of jobs and where does an exact number like that come from? Let's take a look at a few ways this could be accomplished.

The first way is the way that they supposedly plan to do it. With rebuilding the country's infrastructure. Okay fine, I have no problem with a more robust infrastructure. But here's my question: If these 3 million jobs were absolutely necessary for the country to function, then wouldn't they already exist? Sure, you can create the jobs but you can't create the need for these kind of jobs. It's either there or it isn't. And what would be the end result of this massive government project? Three million more people on the government payroll, either directly or indirectly through contracted companies. Where would the money for three million more government employees come from? And what would happen to these employees over time? I don't know about you but I've never known government to ever get smaller again once it expands. And if the government does create million of new jobs that weren't in fact necessary, all they've really done is throw a colossal amount of extra money down the welfare drain. Higher taxes for all would surely follow.

Another way that the new President wants to create jobs is by offering a $3,000 tax credit to employers for hiring new employees. Sure the employer is going to take the money but they are only going to hire someone if they need to. That $3,000 means nothing in comparison to the actual cost of employing someone. So again, with this method you can't just create jobs where there is no demand for a job.

The third and most dire way to create three million jobs is to start a war on the scale of World War 2. Most of these jobs would come in the form a reinstated military draft and the rest would come from manufacturing the weapons of war.

Personally, it annoys me whenever any politician claims to want to create jobs or claims to have created jobs in the past. The reality is that politicians have very little to do with job creation in a direct sense and they rely on the public being ignorant of that fact in order to get votes. My guess is that these three million jobs will never be created and that the economy will continue to spiral downward for the better part of Barack Obama's first term as President. Only time will tell if his and other politician's meddling in the economy will speed it's recovery or it's continued collapse. Whatever method is actually attempted to create these jobs will very possibly cause more economic instability, misery, heartache, and in some scenarios death. The surest, simplest, and least meddlesome way to quickly create jobs is to cut business taxes significantly. With more cash available those businesses can afford more employees.

Webhost Issues

2009-01-13T09:40:00.004-05:00

Just when I was hoping to get back to my regular posting schedule, my webhost had issues Monday night and I couldn't upload my article.

I will publish for tomorrow, and then hopefully I will be back to my regular schedule.

Sorry for the delay.

Capitalism Is Not A Punchline

2009-01-09T09:35:00.000-05:00

During the December 28th episode of Fox's animated series American Dad, there were numerous jokes about capitalism. The entire series is dedicated to mocking conservative values but until that moment I had never considered capitalism to be a thing to be portrayed as conservative or liberal. It's our economic system, it always has been, and the idea that it should be trivialized with some Hollywood writer's jokes is just ignorant.

Over the past several months politicians have been tearing down pieces of capitalism in favor of socialist policies. Barack Obama was elected on such ideals. Likewise President Bush and many people in Congress have been driving these same issues in the last few months. Again, I think ignorance is at play here. Ignorance of what capitalism has built in this country.

People are angry about the economic meltdown that started in 2008, and it is certainly far from over. The politicians assure them that they are gonna stop this from happening again and instead of punishing people who have abused the system, they are punishing the system. Capitalism did not create this economic crisis, greed did. It was politicians who were greedy for votes and so they pressured banks to make bad loans to people who couldn't afford them. It was greedy banks who went along with it to squeeze some money out of poor people. It was poor people who were greedy for a house they couldn't afford and so took a loan that they couldn't possibly pay back. Every economic system in the world is susceptible to greed, it's how well the system works when it's not run by crooked people that is important. If all of the sleazy people who ran this economy into the ground were actually being held accountable then it would have put a stop to it all.

So for those people who are so eager to tear down capitalism let's take a look around the world at some other examples. How about the USSR? Communism created so much poverty that it couldn't be sustained and they collapsed. How about Cuba? Again, poverty is rampant. Venezuela? Socialism is crippling the average citizen while filling the pockets of the government. China is a great example. It's the only truly wealthy communist nation and why are they wealthy? Because we pour billions of dollars into their economy every year buying goods from them. Capitalism has been so successful that it lifts the economic status of not only our own nation but of the largest communist nation as well.

So someone please show me how capitalism doesn't work because I'm really not seeing it. You want socialism? Then you're going to get it. When the dust settles we will be as poor and dependent on our government as the rest of the world. If I wanted to relive the Feudal Age, I'd go visit a renaissance fair.

I'm Not Dead and I'm Still Not A Rat

2009-01-06T11:16:00.002-05:00

With the holidays firmly behind me I am ready to get back to I'm Not A Rat with my regular posting schedule of Monday, Wednesday, Friday. In addition to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Day, I have a bunch of family birthdays in November, December, and January as well. It all kind of combines into this three month long family get together. It's great, but it's also great to get back to a bit of normalcy.

It's been encouraging to look at my website stats and see that in spite of my cutback in postings that traffic has remained the same. So thank you to everyone who has stuck around to read what I have to say.

In 2009 I plan to continue my focus on money making topics and self-sufficiency topics on this website but political articles will also feature heavily as they did in the last half of 2008. I'm also introducing a new feature. Every Saturday will be a News Roundup of links to news articles from the previous week that are worthy of note.

The Christmas Gift

2008-12-24T06:32:00.000-05:00

I remember a time not too long ago when my wife and I were really struggling financially. Heck we aren't far better now. At the time though I was beginning to question how we would be able to heat our house through the winter. Bills were piling up and there wasn't much hope of the situation improving anytime soon. Christmas came and we had to make the tough decision to not buy each other anything for Christmas. The holiday is certainly not all about giving or receiving presents but it's nice to be able to go spend money on your spouse and surprise them with something and it really stinks when you can't.

A co-worker of mine at the time was somewhat aware of the situation we were in and a few days before Christmas he gave me a card. Inside of it was $50. He wanted my wife and I to be able to buy each other something for Christmas. Later that day we took the money, split it up, and went shopping for each other. Nothing big or extravagant just small gifts that wouldn't have been there otherwise. There's something so much more special about being able to give someone a gift after you've already resigned yourself to the idea that you won't be able to. The gifts you receive in those circumstances are all the more precious as well.

That friend of mine may never know just how much he changed Christmas for us that year. I pray that God will multiply to him and his family the blessing that he gave us on Christmas. And to everyone who reads this article, may you be blessed richly and joy be upon you.

Merry Christmas.

What's Holding You Back

2008-12-17T08:04:00.000-05:00

There comes a time, or many times, in everyone's life when they feel as if life has not been working out as they had hoped. Often times this prompts the question of what has been holding them back. More often than than not, what's been holding them back is themselves.

A lot of my articles recently have dealt with these kind of ideas but I think it is worth reiterating. You need to know what your goals are in life and you need to ask yourself if you can really bear the thought of looking back twenty years from now and realizing that you've accomplished none of them. Wasted time is such a huge thing in our society and it's crushing to the would-be entrepreneur. Another death blow to your progress towards your goals can be trying to pursue something that you really know nothing about. Having a great business idea is one thing, having the knowledge, time, and will power to take the idea from a dream to a reality can be quite another. Investing time and money into areas that you have no business being in won't help you achieve anything. Pursue knowledge before you invest.

A couple months ago my family and I were taking a trip out of state for a couple days. The day we were supposed to leave I looked up the directions on the internet and hit the print button. The printer proceeded to make a series of loud bangs and was shaking violently. An orange error light came on but gave no indication of the problem. I pulled the paper out, put it back in, checked the cartridges, and couldn't find anything wrong. Print. Wrrrr, bang, bang , bang, shake, orange error light. Again, I looked over the whole printer and still couldn't find anything wrong. I repeated this whole process a couple more times and finally saw what the problem was. Inside the printer, all the way over to the right side was a pink plastic Easter egg that was sitting right in the path of the cartridge carriage. Oh, the joys of having a toddler. I removed the offending egg and the printer started working just fine.

Many times in life, we are our own worst enemy and hold ourselves back from accomplishing anything. But sometimes what's holding us back is a pink Easter egg in our printer.

The Dumbening

2008-12-03T08:23:00.000-05:00

Over the past decade we've seen a lot of changes in the entertainment and news media industry and I for one don't believe that the changes are positive ones. It seems as if everything is being dumbed down and that the bulk of the public is just fine with that and in fact are eating it up more than ever before.

Over the past decade video games have seen a huge transition away from games that require a certain level of strategic planning and mental involvement towards a style of game play that boils down to mindless repetition. Those kind of games have always been present in the industry but it's really only been in the last ten years that they have become the biggest sellers. Some good examples are Guitar Hero and Rock Band. The value of video games for stimulating the mind was dubious before, but now it's even worse. I often waste too much time playing a game called Combat Arms. It's an online first person shooter that features various modes of play including capture the flag and elimination mode. When I play it, I only play Capture the Flag. It's fun to try and strategize how best to overcome the other team. But Elimination mode is by far the most popular. The only goal in an elimination game is to kill more players than are killed on your team. There is no strategy it's just mindless shooting and it's what most people choose to play.

In the television industry the past decade has seen the rise of reality television. The networks realized that they don't need to pay writers or actors they can just bring in some random people off the street and have them play a game and people will watch it. There is no attempt at quality programming with these shows and yet it is wildly popular.

Thirty years ago video games didn't exist and seventy years ago television was just in it's infancy. People used their free time differently in those days. Sure it wasn't all reading books and learning but when kids played, they actually did something physically and often times mentally stimulating. If you wanted to play a game, it was a family and/or social thing, not a solitary tapping of buttons or keys on a computer or video game system. I believe that the recent rise in dumb entertainment is a direct result of a generation of video games and a few generations of television watching. People are less physically and mentally active. I'm not trying to blame the entertainment industry for this problem any more than someone who eats at McDonald's everyday should blame them for their obesity. I believe in personal responsibility and people are responsible for how they choose to use their time.

A couple weeks ago one of our horses ran through a fence late at night. I didn't have time to fix and so I decided to take care of it after work the next day. When I got home from work that day it was already dark and it was snowing. I had been looking forward to a relaxing evening of watching TV and playing video games. But that wasn't going to happen. Instead I was out in a dark field with snow falling around me and I was piecing together an electric fence that had broken in multiple locations. About an hour into the work I realized something. I felt alive. I was cold and tired but I felt alive. I was actually doing something. It wasn't what I would have chosen to do that evening but it was something real and tangible, not just another night of letting my brain turn into useless mush.

As I continued to piece the fence back together I started to feel the electric shocks through my gloves and realized that I had forgotten to unplug the fence. But the shocks were minor and I assumed that the gloves were protecting me a bit. The shocks however continued to grow in intensity as the fence became more intact and as I was tying off a wire at a fence post my wrist came in contact with the metal post just as the wire did and I got a huge shock. It felt like someone had punched me in the wrist and like my thumb was on fire. I then decided to unplug the fence. Feeling alive is one thing, lighting up like a Christmas tree is quite another.

There are millions of people willingly participating in The Dumbening. You can be a part of that tide or you can fight it. Be active, feel alive and do something with your life.

Angel Food Ministries - 100th Post!

2008-11-26T23:45:00.002-05:00

If you are like me then sticking to a budget to remain financially solvent is becoming a main priority. I've found for myself that sticking within the budget when it comes to food is harder than most other areas. I've been a bit sickened lately when a couple bags of groceries can cost more than $40. Recently a couple internet friends of my wife tipped her off to Angel Food Ministries. It's a non-profit organization that buys lots of food at wholesale and then sells it for wholesale to the public. A good size box of food costs $30 and is easily worth double that. This past Saturday we picked up our very first box of food from Angel Food Ministries. Here's what it contained: steaks, pork ribs, hot dogs, eggs, chicken breasts, chicken nuggets, ground turkey, milk, peanut butter, cranberry sauce, pasta, pancake mix, green beans, carrots

Not bad for $30. I should note that some of the items are quite generic but that doesn't mean poor quality. They also have several optional boxes that you can order that cost varying amounts and feature different meat or fruit and vegetable items. Next month I think I'll order one of the optional boxes as well.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the US and Christmas is four weeks away. This time of year can definitely get expensive, do yourself a favor and at least look at Angel Food Ministries. It can be a great money saver and this is certainly not a time to be spending money unnecessarily.

And because Thanksgiving is only 15 minutes away as of the time of this writing, I would like to just say one thing that I am thankful for. There are many many things that I am thankful for and most more personal than this one. But the one thing that I'd like to share with you is that this is my 100th post on I'm Not A Rat. This is the first blog that I have consistently stuck to for this long and I am thankful for the things that I have learned and been able to share with all of you over the course of the last 8 or 9 months through this website. Thank you for reading.

Black Friday

2008-11-21T09:08:00.003-05:00

We are just a week away from the most greed filled day of the year. I am talking about Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is one of the commercially innocent holidays remaining of the major holidays. That status is being stripped away though by more and more retail stores choosing to open on Thanksgiving instead of waiting until Friday to kick off their sales.

I have never gone shopping on Black Friday, most years it is because I have been working and a couple years it's simply because I've got no money. As someone who has worked inside of a store during this madness I can say that it is generally a display of the worst of humanity. People pushing, and yelling, and bursting with anger if they don't get their hands on lots of junk that they don't need anyway. A lot of them are the types that you see every year, buying the same type of junk, and also throughout the year whenever sales are good enough. These are the ones that aren't buying for themselves or as gifts for anyone, they are simply reselling. And they are usually the rudest ones.

If I could give just one piece of advice to those who are thinking of venturing out on Black Friday it would be this: Don't. Do you actually need the things you plan to buy or are the low prices driving greed somewhere within you? Those low prices aren't worth dealing with the traffic, the crowds, the stress, and more often in recent years the violence that accompanies this day.

I have a friend that has worked at Wal-Mart for a number of years. She told me that every year on Black Friday she comes home with bruises all over her from greed driven customers trying to get to whatever generic electronics item is on sale that year. Black Friday is definitely a dark day in America. Once again this year, I will be working that day. Fortunately though the company I currently work for doesn't deal with this kind of insanity.

Black Friday

2008-11-21T09:08:00.001-05:00

National Novel Writing Month

2008-11-12T19:26:00.000-05:00

November is National Novel Writing Month. Maybe November 12th is a bit late in the month to be mentioning it, but this article kind of got preempted by all the political news last week.

National Novel Writing Month is when writers all across the country attempt to write an entire novel in one month. It's an admirable goal and one that I don't intend to achieve. I am however going to put a renewed focus on the novel that I am currently writing. That means that there will likely be a few less articles on I'm Not A Rat this month. I love writing on this website but the reality is that it sometimes cuts into my creative writing a bit much. I have a certain goal in mind for how much I would like to have finished on the novel by January and if I'm going to achieve it then I need to shift some of my writing time around to put a little more emphasis on fiction instead of non-fiction.

I hope you, my loyal readers, understand and cheer me on in this endeavor. I've got some great articles coming up, they're just going to be a bit more spaced out.

Preparing for the Years Ahead

2008-11-07T09:36:00.001-05:00

We are just a few days removed from Barack Obama's election as President of the United States and still a couple months away from when he actually takes office. It's never too early to start planning for the future and I think it's important to understand how policies that Obama plans to put in place may affect your daily life.

If your finances are like mine then supposedly Obama plans to give us a tax cut and people who are wealthy will have their taxes increased. On the surface this seems great for people who aren't well off financially but the problem is that it punishes people for being successful. Why should people work hard to succeed when the government promises to punish them for it?

He also plans to raise taxes on businesses. This has the great potential to do two things: one is that businesses will likely raises their prices to cover the cost of the tax increase and the second thing that could happen is that business close up shop and move over seas. In both instances we will need any tax cut we can get because things that we already can't afford are going to cost us more.

There's also that promise of $1000 for everyone in America that is supposed to come from the pockets of the oil companies. Again to punish them for being successful. Look I need any money I can get, so it's not like I would take the check and through it back in his face, but the reality is that a one time check for $1000 won't even heat my house for one winter and does nothing to actually lower the price of oil. My other problem with this idea is that I feel it was just an effort to buy votes for $1000 each and I sincerely doubt he will even follow through with this promise.

So what can we as individuals do to prepare ourselves for potentially far worse economic conditions in the country? The short answer is that we need to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. And preparing for the worst can mean a lot of different things depending on how bad you think things might get in the next four years. I should really say the next eight years. If Bush was able to go two terms while the media was destroying him before he even took office, then certainly Obama being the media's anointed one can go two terms.

I think a wise person would not spend beyond their means, would save money instead of going into debt. I wise person would become self-reliant in as many areas as he or she is capable. I think a wise person wouldn't just be thinking about stocking up on canned goods but growing their own food and learning how to can it themselves. I think now more than ever you need to be the best that you can be at your job so if the company you work for is making cuts you hopefully won't be one of the first to go. Find ways to make yourself energy independent because you realize that the country will never be.

These are all things that people would be wise to consider any time but especially right now when there is so much instability in our own country and abroad. We've had plenty of presidents who turned out to be pretty bad and it's way too early to start judging Obama as president, but I feel it is necessary to understand the potential consequences of his policies so that we are prepared and can handle the things that directly affect our lives.

The Day After the Election

2008-11-05T07:26:00.000-05:00

I'm writing the first part of this article at 4 pm on Tuesday so as of right now I have no idea who won the presidential election. Up until about four hours ago I was pretty hopeful that John McCain would emerge the victor when all of this is over. But a startling thought kind of killed a lot of that hope.

Nearly every person I have heard show support for Barack Obama has done so from a place of willing ignorance. Most of the endorsements for Obama are filled with words that have no bearing on who he actually is and what he actually stands for. I saw an article yesterday that claimed Obama stood for family values. I'm not sure where they got that impression. Most of the rest of the endorsements Obama picks up lack anything that even approaches a substantial reason for supporting the man. Colin Powell's endorsement is a good example of this.

So here is the startling revelation that I had: None of this makes any sense. When normally intelligent people are willing to ignore all of the facts and come up with reasons for supporting someone that have no bearing in reality then I think there are greater things going on here than meets the eye. Just the other day a woman was buying dog food at the store I work at and said "I can't wait until Obama is president and we don't have to deal with these high prices anymore." What is wrong with people? It's best not to try and make sense of it all because you can't. There is no reasoning and no logic to describe why Obama carries the support that he does. What I'm trying to say is that I believe that our leaders are only in power because God allows them to be in power. If Obama wins the election then it is because God willed it so. And I certainly don't mean that to sound like God somehow endorses Obama's policies. No, I think sometimes nations need tough medicine to get themselves back on track. See my article Electing a King for more information on that.

I would like to believe that when this article is published tomorrow morning that none of this has actually come true, that enough of a America is not under the Obama spell to bring about a different outcome. The reason I don't hold on to much hope of that however is because I have yet to find an Obama supporter that is actually informed about the issues and has based their decision on that knowledge. I'm sure those kinds of people are out there as well, and though I disagree with them, at least they are making their decision from a place of knowledge and not because they think Obama will lower the price of dog food or because "McCain is too old."

This next paragraph is specifically for people in Pennsylvania. I've heard so much about how Obama cares about the middle class but what will happen to the middle class in Pennsylvania if he bankrupts the coal industry like he said he would? What about all those middle class people employed in that industry? What will happen to our electric prices in PA if there is no coal industry, or a heavily hindered one? If Pennsylvania goes to Obama, it just reinforces everything I have written in this article about voters not thinking and only feeling.

WEDNESDAY MORNING:

Well America has actually done it. I watched McCain's concession speech last night and at one point it almost seemed like there was a tone of “everyone can just shut up about equal rights now.” I could be wrong but that's what some of what he said seemed to be geared towards. I only watched about two minutes of Obama's speech in front of the teary eyed millions. Never before have I seen a president elect welcomed with such fervor and emotional displays, it's a bit frightening. America is normally not about these kinds anointings of elected officials. I kept expecting to see Hypnotoad somewhere up on stage with him. Friday's article will be about what to expect in the years ahead, don't miss it.

The Vacation has Ended

2008-11-02T20:29:00.002-05:00

After taking an entire week off from work and this website I am back. I usually rather enjoy my time away from responsibilities but this wasn't exactly the most relaxing vacation ever. I'll spare you the many details of why it wasn't that great but I'll tell you one small story from last week.

It all started the very first day of vacation after getting off of work. I was driving home and then we would be leaving for New Jersey shortly after that. It was raining and I drove through a large puddle which splashed water into the engine and the car nearly stalled in an intersection. Smoke and steam billowing and check engine light flashing, I pressed on. We got on the road around 6 pm that fateful Saturday night. The rain was heavy and I could barely see the road in front of me. As we neared Philadelphia traffic slowed to a crawl and that's when realized that the Phillies were in the World Series! A trip that should have taken 2 and a half hours ended up taking 4 and a half. There were a couple times that we considered stopping at a hotel for the night because the rain was so bad. But we made it! The visit to relatives in New Jersey was pleasant but driving in New Jersey is not. At most intersections they don't let you turn left! You must turn right and go around a loop just to get back to the intersection in order to go left. Craziness! Their politicians should be run out of office for laws like that. We got lost on a couple of occasions thanks to that. On the way home we got lost again because of crazy road changes. And that my friends, simple set the stage for how the rest of the week went. It's not like anything terrible happened but nothing good happened either.

On a brighter note I finally finished my first online store. Three months ago I mentioned that I set up a small page for Wizkids Pirates of the Cursed Seas and that I hoped to develop a store out of that to sell some of my extras. Well I finally did it and got my first sale within the first couple days. Here is the link to the store: Pirates for Sale! I'll keep you posted on the growth or lack thereof of this new venture.

I also took some time to fix one of my other sites, substandardstudios.com. Apparently the blog portion of it hadn't functioned right for months.

I spent some time working on music as well but I wasn't nearly as productive as I had hoped to be with it or with many other things I had hoped to accomplished. Eh, life goes on.

Vacation

2008-10-24T09:12:00.001-04:00

Next week I'll be taking a vacation from work for the first time in a year. Changing jobs a couple times during the past year has kept me from being able to take any amount of time off of work so this is a much needed break. My family and I will be taking a short trip to New Jersey to visit some relatives and then I'll be spending the rest of the week doing work around the house including recording some new songs and working on some websites. So I won't be at my job but I'll be doing work at home.

I think I'm going to take the week off from articles on here as well. After many political articles in a row I'm feeling a bit drained from all of it. Monday's article Electing a King, pretty much sums up the best explanation I can figure for what America is possibly about to do. The implications of not only the outcome of the presidential race but also senate races will have far reaching effects for many years to come and right now I just don't have the energy to keep writing about it. So I will return with new articles November 3rd, right before the election. And if I am as productive as I hope to be with my time off then hopefully I will be able to share some of what I do next week with all of you.

Catching Up With the Internet

2008-10-22T10:37:00.000-04:00

I've spent the last four years on dialup internet. During that time I wasted countless hours waiting for pages to load and didn't go to many websites because I didn't have the time to wait. I also killed many website ideas I had during that time because managing them would have been impossible on dialup. As of a month and a half ago though I have finally rejoined the rest of the high speed world and am on a level playing field with my internet connection.

I came to a scary realization a couple week ago though. While I spent the last several years maintaining simplified websites to accommodate my connection, the rest of the internet was becoming bigger and better and I simply ignored what I couldn't do on my connection. Now though I realize that while I was stuck, the rest of the internet has passed me by. My web design and graphic design skills are severely out of date and if I want to be able to compete in the online world I need a major upgrade to my knowledge. I may have grown up with computers but kids today have grown up with internet capable computers and their skill level is accordingly greater in the online arena.

If you find that your skill set is also obsolete here are some subject areas I would recommend studying: css, xml, php, asp, javascript, internet marketing, and very importantly graphic design. The first several things I listed are the meat of what makes a site do what it does but the internet is increasingly a visually dazzling place and most sites don't need a really meaty backend to be able to perform their intended function. So if nothing else, try to look good. Good graphic design is often aided greatly by good graphic design software and that unfortunately isn't cheap. All of the graphics on all of my websites were made using Paint Shop Pro. Years ago I would have likened Paint Shop Pro to being really similar to but not quite as good as Photoshop, while keeping the price tag much cheaper than Photoshop. Unfortunately though in recent years the makers of Paint Shop Pro have really not kept pace with the tools that are now available in Photoshop.

There are a number of really great free tutorials scattered throughout the internet that could teach me any of the programming languages I listed. And that is where I plan to start when I am able to make the time. I haven't yet figured out how to resolve the graphic design problem but I'll work on it. We live in an online world and it changes with such frequency that it is far to easy to be left behind.

Electing a King

2008-10-20T20:03:00.001-04:00

You know I was thinking about this whole situation with Obama's fast rise on the national scene. Many of the people who support him, do so with a fervor that is frightening and when they hear the facts about who he is and what he stands for they just shut it out not wanting to hear anything negative about this hero that they've lifted up. There are so many really scary things people are doing in the name of Obama, not the least of which is a bunch of teenagers dressed in camouflage doing a chant to Obama. All of these things reminded me of a story from the Bible, when the nation of Israel decided that they no longer needed or wanted the leadership of God in their nation. Instead they clamored for a king like all of their neighboring nations. They wanted to give power over their lives to someone on Earth instead of God. And so they lifted up Saul. He was tall, good looking, and a good speaker. At first everything was fine but then quickly turned sour. He killed people who disagreed with him. He grew jealous of anyone who got attention from the people and tried to kill them as well and in the process King Saul self-destructed and ended up tearing apart the country. The point is that Israel got exactly what they wanted. They got a king, who did what kings do and acted only in his best interests and not the interests of the people he was supposed to be leading.

Many people in America right now are clamoring for a king. I hope for the sake of the future of this nation, that we do not elect a king on November 4th. Of course though the story didn't end with King Saul for Israel. After his reign finally ended God gave Israel it's most famous king, King David. He guided the people back to a place of worship and close relationship with God. He made his own mistakes and his reign had it's own troubles. Even good kings have problems of course.

The point to all of this is that the United States of America was founded on the idea that no one person here on Earth should have the authority that the king of England did at the time. We find ourselves at a place in our nation's history where government involvement and control over our daily lives and over commerce has grown to a level never before seen since our founding. Barack Obama promises nothing but more government spending and more government involvement in our lives. John McCain wants to curb government spending and get government out of our way. That's what he says anyway, what he would do as president may be something different but with Obama we know for sure that he wants the federal government to have more power. We cannot forget the mistakes of the past. We cannot just blindly accept policies that grant more power to the president.

Senator Government, Obama's New Nickname

2008-10-17T09:17:00.000-04:00

I didn't have a chance to watch the second debate live so I had recorded it. I ended up only watching ten minutes of that debate before turning it off. I later deleted the recording, I just didn't want to hear the same garbage again. So when Wednesday night's debate began I didn't have much intention of watching it but I got sucked in unfortunately.

As of right now when I'm writing this I haven't seen any polls on who did better in the debate but I can guess what they will all say. The polls from liberal news organizations who have a liberal leaning audience are going to show that Obama won. But I felt that McCain won by a slim margin, and only slim because I realize that those who support Obama probably heard singing angels every time he spoke and felt that he did well.

I noticed a couple of interesting things in this debate in the character of each of the candidates. Let's look at Obama first.

I think he must be using a professional speech coach because he didn't do nearly as much of his usual stuttering that generally precedes anything but a scripted response. When McCain brought up his connections with Ayers and ACORN, Obama was completely dishonest about the nature and depth of those relationships and the nature of ACORN as an organization. Obama once again mentioned Joe Biden's ties to Scranton, Pennsylvania. This is simply an insult to the people of Pennsylvania. You hear more from the Obama campaign about Biden and Pennsylvania than you do about Biden and Delaware. Let's be clear, most people in Pennsylvania had probably never even heard of Joe Biden until he became the VP candidate. So to expect us to just vote for Obama-Biden because of some ancient ties that Biden has with Pennsylvania is insulting.

For McCain's part he did finally bring up Barack's character in front of a national audience but he didn't really go for it with full force and part of that was probably because of time constraints involved with each of the questions. McCain did very well at nailing Obama on a lot of issues but unfortunately for him he has the worst poker face in the world. Every time he nailed Obama on an issue, as soon as he was done speaking he looked very smug and self-satisfied Obama is a lot better at hiding his contempt for John McCain. To his credit I don't think I heard him use the word 'maverick' through the whole debate. If I hear McCain or Palin say the word 'maverick' one more time I think I might puke.

McCain did have a couple of great lines during the debate though. The first one was when he finally called Obama out on trying to make people think he is just like Bush. This probably isn't an exact quote but he said "If you wanted to run against President Bush you should have run for president four years ago." The other great statement from McCain was completely accidental but it was perfect. He misspoke and accidentally called Obama Senator Government. If you really listened to Obama's responses Wednesday night, his answer to almost every question included more government spending and more government involvement in our lives. Senator Government is the perfect name for him. All that he thinks of is more more more government.

Another great name that radio host Michael Savage came up with for Barack Obama was BO. Since it is somehow so offensive to mention his middle name as Hussein and in the tradition of referring to a president by their initials it would have to be BO instead of BHO. So if America is crazy enough to elect Barack Hussein Obama, when he turns out to stink as a president, everyone who had any sense about this guy will say "Well what did you expect? You elected a guy named BO."

Anyway, we've got three more weeks of all of this garbage to go. And then we're gonna get four years of whatever we deserve.